For the most part "Assault Weapons" aren't legal. To get a permit for an automatic weapon you need to fill out a 12 page background application with finger prints and photo. Send the Feds a $200 check and wait for up to a year to get approved.

And to throw a few more wrenches in owning automatic weapons. The gun must have been manufactured before 1986. States can ban automatic weapons so the federal permit will do you no good.

So, it's great that you don't think "Assault Weapons" should be legal since they already aren't..

He wasn’t a kid .... he was an adult with children. When will they learn to comply with police commands???

Sounds like someone is attempting to make excuses for bad behavior.
If Cops killed Ex-Cons only because of their record, there would be a lot more dead in the news. Come to think of it, that would solve a lot of problems. :coolsmiley:

He had is chance and blew it. Glad none of the responding officers were killed.

Do you have some links to statistics to support this claim?

We don't know many details of the incident...which I find odd. My question is whatever he "did" wasn't there another way of restraining him? After all there were alot of cops there. You tell me this group couldn't contain ONE person?

If there is an "increase of gun deaths of black men by police" then maybe the question should be is, why is there an increase in "black" crime? Or, maybe there is an increase in "black" defiance of the police? It may very well be race related or racist related, but I do not think that the position of the police has changed for the worse. If one wishes to be blind to ALL the stats related to police arrests, regardless of race or the stats related to police shootings regardless of race and then compare them to ALL shootings in America, as well as the demographics of the incidents, then it is easy to accuse everyone of being racists. Perhaps it is not white racists but black racists? If so, are they being given excuses? Is something that happened a hundred years ago pertinent to giving bad behavior to anyone that wishes to use the race card today?

It's been a long time since I have seen a sign on a business for separate entrances for blacks. It has been a long time since I have seen anyone denied service because of their color. And as far as I know, affirmative action changed the problem with color discrimination when it comes to employment. The problem may not be with white racists but actually a failure of some folks to assimilate into American culture.

Time to quit making excuses for bad behavior. Listen to the police when they give you instruction and you will live another day to complain about your being singled out. Better yet, if you don't do anything wrong, you will likely have little to no interactions with the police.

:agree:

Your right, the problem is making the officer feel threatened. Show them your hands and the outcomes will be a lot better.

I feel very bad for current day LEO’s. They have an extremely difficult, important, and risky job. Their jobs often put them in situations where they are caught between a rock and a hard place. They act in accordance with their training, in the hope of living another day to go home to their families. The result can put them in an unfortunate predicament where they are wrongfully labeled as racist and their livelihoods are put in jeopardy. If things continue as is pretty soon there will be a serious shortage of good qualified candidates to fill the necessary job openings.

Did you watch the video? He was ignoring the commands of the police. He opened his door and was reaching inside. The police had no idea what he was going to do next. If this person had simply listened to the police, things would have gone much better for him.

I just posted about this as well. DISGUSTING.
Watch the video, and listen to a witness describe the situation. WHY did they need to send 7 police officers in the first place?

Listen to the police or not, which none of us heard exactly what they said, there’s no excuse for this. It shouldn’t be, “listen to what we say or we’ll shoot you in the back, even though you don’t have a gun or knife.” The guy didn’t go anywhere, and he had THREE KIDS in the back of the car. So now you’re saying that it’s as simple as just listening, and has nothing to do with SOME, not all, trigger happy LEOs.

I am sure there was a reason send 7 officers.

How did they know what the guy was reaching for? If he would have said the reason would have been a rather different outcome.

Just because there was 3 kids in the back how would they know if he was reaching for a weapon?

You can’t be serious that you think it was ok to shoot a person because they aren’t listening patiently to you.. walking away wasn’t a smart thing to do but shooting someone because of that is never ok..

Deadly serious. What if he grabbed a gun, turned around and shot that policeman? Would you be OK with that?

When the police take you out of your car and are conducting an investigation, you are not to go wandering around and cart it reaching into your car for who knows what?

This will be a just shooting. Don’t sit in your comfy living room and second guess LEO. They are the ones putting their life on the line everyday.

How do you know that he was reaching for a weapon? Did the officers see the weapon while his back was to them, blocking their view? I’d bet money on the fact that there was no weapon. It’s not as if he ran to the car to grab a knife or gun.

These shootings can’t be compared to police shootings of white criminals who don’t listen either. White people in general haven’t been discriminated against because they’re white. No, those shootings aren’t publicized—maybe they should start doing so to show that SOME cops are just trigger happy in general— they all need to be held accountable for their actions and treated the same way. What you’re saying is that color isn’t the issue; therefore, you’re saying that its police in general, regardless of the offender’s race. If that’s the case, maybe it’s time to address that. Kill two birds with one stone.

Sure, it would show more or or less of either black or white, but it won’t tell you which shootings were justifiable or not. That’s the issue. It’s not how many, it’s why.

True, but does that give them the right to shoot anyone based on how “criminal” they are or were? That’s yet another form of discrimination, especially if there are no current warrants out for their arrest.

Well, he was an adult, not a kid. Some say that he went to the car because he worried about his children in the back seat. The Police were there for a domestic disturbance. Police statistics show those to be very dangerous situations. Police do not like to go into those situations. Their presence may make the situation worse. Society is now grappling with the idea of involving more social service type professionals in these situations. Possibly they could wear vests and have radios and a squad car could stay some distance away. The social workers could receive danger pay. Those are some opinions and suggestions.
.......As to the actual shooting, I would suggest that Police carry 2 guns, one with lead bullets and one with rubber bullets. This man had his back to the officers so maybe (?) it would have been a good situation for rubber, not lead bullets?

I disagree. If things continue as is, there might be a decrease of those who shoot to kill— SEVEN times in the back—and a decrease in black (AND WHITE) deaths by unjustifiable shootings. It would then keep the well qualified LEO and weed out the others to make room for more well qualified and quality officers.

So that means that your opinion of those who don’t believe there should be unjustifiable shootings, regardless of race, is that they don’t care, and blue lives don’t matter to them. I,for one, feel that both issues matter.

Why not shoot to incapacitate and not shoot to kill?

don't stop shooting until the threat has ended


can't: shoot once, how did that work. shoot again, how did that work. shoot a third time, how did that work.

:BigApplause:

You should join the PD and see how that works out for you.

Dear Moderator,
I respectfully disagree that "the media" is irrelevant to this topic. Since this incident occurred, I have watched/listened to many different media outlets. And nearly all of them begin the headlines with..."another unarmed black man was shot by police"! NO PERSPECTIVE, or circumstances?! So, for us(general public and TOTV members) to objectively look at this, when you have the media using sensationalized and inflammatory terms, makes it quite difficult? They were quick to point out that there were 3 kids in the car, and he was shot 7 times.

Dear TOTV folks,
Although I did not wear the uniform, I worked with law enforcement for 10yrs, and have relatives that are LEOs. Their training teaches them many tactics, techniques, and procedures(TTP). They're also taught statistics and various scenarios. Scenes like these are VERY TENSE, and your adrenaline is flowing! They're trying to get the scene under control, and that is nearly impossible, when you have someone(regardless of color) not following their direction(s), and actually walking away and reaching into a vehicle? ESPECIALLY, when YOUR kids are in the car, and weapons are drawn??? Where is your care for those children? As for shooting him 7 times, I'll refer you to both the TTP(s) and statistics. TTPs teach you that you don't shoot unless you feel threatened, and you don't shoot to wound, as with the suspect's adrenaline, he/she could actually survive long enough to inflict further harm. Hence, he was shot 7 times at close range, and he's going to live(i.e. statistics)! As for the amount of cops there, that's not even worth responding to. Let's let the facts lay out, and see where the evidence leads, before judging. And, the MSM will continue to flame the fires with their rhetoric! Stay safe everyone.

happened in Kenosha Wisconsin

Amen, well said.
 

As is occasionally noted in this forum, many people hear what they want to hear and avoid the rest. Or if they hear something that does not match their perspective they reject it under the guise of some acceptable label that makes it illegitimate. The good thing about this forum is that if you keep reading you will often find some common sense intelligent commentary that both addresses the focal issue as well as shedding some broader light on the topic of human behavior...including bias and stupidity and sometimes common sense.

Of course a person's record is important during a police contact. How stupid can folks be to think that knowing how dangerous a person can be is not essential in a police officer's confrontation. Knowing that a suspect has a felony record of violence helps an officer be alert. If you think that a police officer gets paid enough to get shot and maybe killed, you are not living in reality. Yes, a police officer may shoot someone in the back in certain dangerous circumstances. If a person is suspected (reasonably) of reaching for a deadly weapon, a police officer is acting in self defense when he shoots to stop the suspect. It is very easy for ignorant, protected citizens to Monday morning quarterback a police shooting. They were not there and the videos you see are only one dimensional so to speak. You only see what someone wishes you to see. A perfect example is the Floyd case. No one saw the other video where he was arrested, cuffed and put into the police car by two officers, and a minute later when they were dealing with the other two subjects, he escaped out of the patrol car. Then he began to resist arrest and capture. That puts more perspective on his being restrained. I am not saying whether or not the restrain was done properly, but it is not unusual for officers to get a violent person down on the ground and place a knee on them, to regain control.
In this case, even with children in the car, this guy might have been reaching for a gun. It would not be the first time that a dirtbag put children in harms way.
I do not see any evidence yet that this is a race based incident. I see only (so far) a cut and dry, out of control disturbance that instead of the subject submitting to instructions by the police, he decided to make a stupid choice and reach into the car for some reason or another. The police assumed it was for nefarious reasons and used deadly force to stop him. If the police had hesitated and IF the subject reached for a gun and shot the officer or officers, then we probably would not be having this conversation. Just another unfortunate incident where a Cop got killed.
Sorry if I do not have any sympathy for persons that persist with stupid actions. Maybe they should make a subset of the Darwin awards for people that get themselves killed STUPIDLY because of their actions with the police.

It's NOT the policemen's fault! For someone to do what this black guy did can make them think of nothing but something bad happening and they can't stand there and see if he brings out a gun or whatever. He forced their hand from his own stupidity. Had he listened to what they said, he would still be alive. The same goes for so many of these people who run or fight the police. Getting arrested is nothing compared to being killed.

What's even worse is this guy was in the wrong but then that seems to make it okay for all the others to go loot, steal, burn and rob anything or anyone in sight like it's Christmas. They make a whole mockery of the black race and it's very sad. Things will never get better with that kind of behavior. We HAVE to have the police for law and order. Can you imagine letting the people on the street be in charge of the law and order??? We would return to the Wild West days and that's not a good thing. SUPPORT YOUR POLICE!!!

The 2 videos I saw show him fighting with the police at the back of the SUV and Mr Blake won that fight. Mr Blake is then scene in the video walking away from the police with their guns drawn. Mr Blake acting with total disregard for what could happen if he continued to walk away and then open the driver's side door and then while an officer pulls on his shirt, reach down inside the vehicle to do whatever.

My statement is just that, mine. I state that I wouldn't want to be a police officer because people like Mr Blake act with total disregard for his own safety and others. I don't need to see if the shoe fits because I have enough intelligence to know it's not for me.

Mr Blake's past, if known by the police would be helpful but not a reason on its own to shoot him.

I think it's helpful to see what it's like to be a police officer in a shootout to gain perspective. YouTube has lots of them and the shootings involve whites, blacks and Latinos.

Watch these guys get shot and keep on doing their job. Watch the thugs get shot and keep on fighting. Then ask yourself if you would just shoot one time to wound the person? Choose between your rubber bullets or your lead ones? Would you wait and see what he's going to pull out of pocket, waist band or under his seat?

These cops see these videos in training. I have personally arrested 6 people at gun point, lived in poverty around violent people and served in the military. I was shot at in Arizona while riding my bike. It's so easy to sit on your couch having never been in a life threatening situation and say you know better than everyone else on how to better handle these types of situations.

I will continue to wait and see if this was a good shooting and if the cop was acting on racist feelings then I'll support protesting for justice.

As far as I know, there is not a police Dept. in America that teaches its officers to "shoot to incapacitate." A gun is use of deadly force. A taser is used to incapacitate. A police officer is taught to shoot to STOP, whether it kills or incapacitates the subject does not matter as long as it stops them. This is not a TV Western where Hickok shoots the gun out of someone's hand. This is fast paced, adrenaline pumping, shaking hands using whatever means it takes to stop the bad guy and still go home at night to your family. Taking unnecessary chances with known felons or violent individuals is being a fool and can get you or your comrades killed.

Either all lives matter or no lives matter

Rubber bullets are made for crowd control, not for self-defense. A police officer ONLY uses lethal force (a gun) when there is a life at stake. Tasers are used to incapacitate, but I wouldn't use one for self-defense. Does a Cop get paid enough to consider incapacitate when his life is at stake?

I'm not disagreeing with you. Just noticed that it was reported that the police had an open warrant on Mr Blake and they were there to arrest him.

This was on a news clip and I don't represent it as fact. Just an fyi.

I don't think the police shot Mr Blake because of his arrest history. I could be wrong as the investigation is on going. It looks like Mr Blake fought with the police on a newly released video and won that fight. Then we see on the original video that Mr Blake acted with total disregard for 3 police officers pointing their guns at him while he went into his SUV. His actions seem on the surface to have lead to him being shot.

I support police reform, blm and prison reform. I will support protest if evidence comes forward that shows a different story.

Except, he didn't grab a gun. He didn't have a gun to grab. The policemen shot him anyway. Why are you okay with that?

If I was hiring for a job opening in my company, a person with a convicted record will matters less to me then someone with no convictions at all.
I'm sure you would look at it the same as me if you were in that position, its only human nature, so we can say some people matter more then others.

You might be right. You think they would have acted any differently if the guy told them he had to check on his kids? If he would’ve told them the reason, which maybe he DID, they probably wouldn’t have believed him anyway.

No, his life shouldn’t be celebrated, but George Floyd said he couldn’t breathe. You see how well that worked. They didn’t care because he had a criminal record? That’s sad.